Melbourne International Comedy Festival review

‘More like a TED Talk,’ has become something of a running joke for comedy shows with an earnest agenda, but it’s hard to think of a more fitting description of Josh Szeps’s Melbourne debut.

For Szeps is more journalist than comedian, and #YouToo akin to an essay on the insidiously manipulative practices of social media giants that are tearing away at the fabric of our civilisation without us barely realising it.

He adopts a chatty and frequently light-hearted tone, but he’s no John Oliver with searing jokes shot through his ever argument. Instead, he offers mildly amusing asides as he reveals how the sophisticated algorithms are geared to giving internet users dopamine hits to keep us addicted, just like the makers of fruit machines. 

And in the search for those mini-highs called ‘likes’, we post or repost increasingly polarised messages, strengthening tribal lines and nurturing division.

None of this is new, but Szeps presents the evidence engagingly. He was a long-time anchor on HuffPost Live – as a long and rather boastful-seeming introductory video makes clear – and now a presenter of the ABC News program Weekend Breakfast, so he knows his stuff. But – and this cannot be stressed strongly enough – this is not a comedy show under all but the most generous of interpretations of the genre.

The final section is devoted to him reliving some social media spats of his own. For all his advice to steer clear of the platforms, he seems to be a prolific user himself – an irony not lost on him, not least when he urges tonight’s minuscule audience to spread the word about his show via Facebook and Twitter.

With such a conclusion, which comes across as a bit preachy and self-serving, you can’t help thinking settling old scores might have been the agenda all along. Plus his fights with transgender activists and other ‘social justice warriors’ is likely to sit uncomfortably with the liberal constituency that make up most comedy festival audiences, even if that is surely his aim as he tries to drag people out of their comfort bubbles.

Review date: 5 Apr 2019
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett